A Most Rare Vision: Inside the Magic of A Midsummer Night’s Dream

June 21, 2024

Literature

Nesha Ruther

Writer at Bond & Grace

“I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was.”- Bottom, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

‍A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies and widely produced plays. Over the centuries, it has worked its way into pop culture, from music to high fashion. Felix Mendelssohn's “Overture and Incidental Music for A Midsummer Night's Dream,” for example, includes the well-known “Wedding March,” that is still used in weddings today. Fashion Houses such as Alexander McQueen have channeled the ethereal, romantic energy of the show in their fashion lines, and McQueen even had a line from the play, “Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind” tattooed on his arm.

Shakespeare’s tropes and techniques have become so prolific that we can often forget that when they were first written, they were entirely original. Nowhere is this more true than in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which reveals Shakespeare as not only a comedic genius and chronicler of the human condition, but an innovator when it comes to form and craft.

Midsummer is believed to have been written in 1593 to be performed at a wedding that Queen Elizabeth was attending. This in and of itself is worth noting, because the play features a theater troupe putting on a production for the wedding of Theseus, Duke of Athens, and Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazon.

When Queen Elizabeth originally watched the show as part of an official state wedding, she would have been watching other royals watching a play, making the whole production quite meta.

Shakespeare wrote 39 plays during his lifetime, most of which pull directly from a piece of historic source material. Historical plays such as King John, Henry V, and more draw from the real-life power struggles of English monarchs. Similarly, shows like Troilus and Cressida, King Lear, and Coriolanus, re-tell stories of ancient Greece and Rome. Midsummer, however, is one of only three shows (Love’s Labour’s Lost and The Tempest being the other two) that does not have such a direct lineage.

Instead, Midsummer combines classical Greek and Roman influences with the mischief and mayhem of English folklore to create something wholly unique.

Theseus, for example, is a classical hero of Greek mythology, and in some instances thought to be the son of Poseidon. Puck, on the other hand, is believed to be inspired by the Púca of Celtic mythology who is often described as a mischievous shapeshifter.

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16th-century audience members would have instantly recognized the classical influences present in Theseus’ court, and loved seeing it echoed back to them in the fairytale form of Oberon and Titania’s. This medley of the classic and folkloric allows viewers to encounter a world both familiar and fantastic.

Similarly, the instigating conflict in which Hermia’s father wants her to marry a man she doesn’t love, is a hallmark of classical Greek and Roman comedy. But when the four Athenian lovers run into the woods, Shakespeare subverts the genre, ushering them into a land of fairies and folklore.

Critic Northrup Frye calls the forest the lovers find themselves in a “green world.” It is a liminal space, a waking dream in which they are tested (by way of Puck’s shenanigans) but also find new freedoms and opportunities unavailable to them in the real world.

In this dream-place Hermia and Lysander can be together without fear of her father, the rejected Helena becomes the object of affection, and even lowly Bottom gets courted by a queen.

While these different worlds bleed into each other, causing chaos and hilarity at every turn, Shakespeare uses subtle distinctions to signal their difference. The meter of the verse, for instance, varies depending on which group the speaker falls into. Theseus and Hippolyta, for example, speak in Blank Verse, while the Athenian lovers use Iambic Pentameter, and the fairies all speak inTetrameter. These variations allow the culture shock and miscommunications that come from the different characters' interactions to be even more entertaining.

These references and subversions of genre are what makes the magic of Midsummer truly shine, and establish the setting as a place we know and recognize, that can also be strange, unpredictable, and fantastic. Ultimately, Midsummer remains a beloved classic because of its humor and innovation, but also what it reveals about love: an absurd, powerful force that has the ability to transform us from human to ass and back again.

Like Bottom when he wakes up from his time with Titania and finds himself speechless, we come out of the show like waking up from a dream, mute, dumb, and utterly awe-struck.